Sixty kilometers west of historic Kraków, where the gentle waters of the Soła River join the upper Vistula across the mist-shrouded lowlands of Małopolskie Voivodeship (Lesser Poland), the medieval town of Oświęcim and the neighboring village of Brzezinka (Birkenau, meaning Birch Forest) greet visitors with a silence that reaches the depths of the soul. Walking beside the rusted railway tracks that pass beneath the red-brick Gatehouse of Birkenau toward stands of white birch trees and quiet ponds holding human ashes, every pilgrim instinctively slows their pace as upon sacred ground. This is the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, the largest unmarked cemetery in the history of humanity.
Across these 191 hectares between 1940 and January 1945, approximately 1.1 million human beings were murdered, including roughly 1 million Jews from across Europe alongside tens of thousands of Poles, Roma and Sinti, and Soviet prisoners of war. Transcending the abyss of hatred, Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a universal sanctuary of conscience and faith: the sacred resting place where Judaism honors one million martyrs who sanctified the Divine Name (Kiddush Hashem), and where the Catholic Church venerates the underground starvation cell in which Father Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe gave his life for a fellow prisoner, as well as the birch grove where the Jewish-born philosopher and Carmelite nun Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) entered eternity.
ISanctification of the Divine Name (Kiddush Hashem) and witnesses of light in the darkness
For more than four centuries before the tragedy of 1940, the town of Oświęcim was a vibrant center of Jewish religious learning and communal life in southern Poland. Its Jewish inhabitants (who made up nearly sixty percent of the town's population in 1939) affectionately called their hometown by the Yiddish name Oshpitzin (אושפיצין, derived from the Latin hospites), meaning Honored Guests, a tribute to the biblical virtue of hospitality exemplified by the Patriarch Abraham. When the Nazi regime turned the former Polish artillery barracks in Oświęcim (Auschwitz I) and the marshlands of Brzezinka village (Auschwitz II-Birkenau) into the epicenter of the Shoah (the Hebrew term meaning Catastrophe, or the Holocaust), over one million Jewish men, women, elders, and children from Poland, Hungary, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Italy were deported here solely because of their Jewish heritage and ancestral covenant.
In Jewish theology and religious law (Halakha), every Jew murdered simply for being a Jew is revered at the highest spiritual rank as one of the Kedoshim (קְדוֹשִׁים, Holy Martyrs). Their death is honored as Kiddush Hashem (קִדּוּשׁ הַשֵּׁם), the Sanctification of the Divine Name. Alongside Kiddush Hashem, rabbinic scholars emphasize Kiddush HaChayim (the Sanctification of Life) witnessed inside the camp: the spiritual resistance of starving prisoners who fasted on Yom Kippur, fashioned makeshift Hanukkah lamps out of hollowed potato skins and scraps of fat, recited pages of the Talmud from memory to teach young boys in the barracks, and sang Maimonides' twelfth principle of faith, Ani Ma'amin (I believe with complete faith in the coming of the Messiah), as they walked into the gas chambers.
Within the library's classification, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial is placed under Judaism because over ninety percent of those whose ashes rest in its soil and ponds were children of Israel, making Birkenau the largest Jewish cemetery on earth. At the same time, this article honors with deep reverence the tens of thousands of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox clergy, religious, and lay faithful who suffered martyrdom on this same soil.
In a place engineered to reduce human beings to tattooed numbers, two canonized saints of the Catholic Church bore witness that love is stronger than death. The first is the Conventual Franciscan friar Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe (1894 to 1941, prisoner number 16670). In late July 1941, when ten prisoners of Block 14 were selected at random to die of starvation in an underground bunker in reprisal for an escape, one of the condemned men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out in anguish for his wife and children. Father Maximilian Kolbe stepped calmly out of the ranks, approached the camp commandant, and asked to take the father's place. Throughout two weeks without food or water in Cell 18 in the basement of Block 11, Father Kolbe led his nine companions in Rosary prayers and Marian hymns, turning the starvation bunker into a chapel until he alone remained conscious and calmly extended his arm for a lethal injection of carbolic acid (phenol) on 14 August 1941, the vigil of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
The second is the eminent German-Jewish phenomenologist Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, born Edith Stein (1891 to 1942 in Wrocław, where her family lived near the White Stork Synagogue). After years of philosophical inquiry alongside Edmund Husserl, she entered the Catholic Church in 1922 and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. Arrested by the Gestapo at the Echt Carmel in the Netherlands together with her sister Rosa Stein on 2 August 1942, she took her sister's hand and spoke words uniting her Jewish lineage and Christian faith: Come, Rosa, let us go for our people. She was martyred in the gas chambers of Birkenau on 9 August 1942 and was proclaimed by Pope John Paul II one of the six Co-Patronesses of Europe.
Among the most sacred historical documents ever recovered from the soil of Birkenau are the Scrolls of Auschwitz (Rękopisy członków Sonderkommando). Written in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, and Greek by Jewish prisoners forced to work in the Sonderkommando units (including Zalman Gradowski, Zalman Lewental, Leib Langfus, Chaim Herman, and Marcel Nadjari), these prayers, testimonies, and chronicles were sealed inside metal canteens and glass jars and buried beneath the ash pits beside Crematoria II and III before their authors were murdered. In a manuscript unearthed from the ashes on 5 March 1945, Zalman Gradowski (a devout Jew from Suwałki) addressed future generations: Dear finder of these writings beneath the earth, know that every grain of ash here was once a living world, a heart that loved and prayed.
Readers comparing older publications written before 1990 with modern scholarship sometimes ask why early plaques mentioned four million victims whereas the established historical figure today is 1.1 million victims. Historians of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (led by Dr. Franciszek Piper) clarified this discrepancy through exhaustive archival research: the four-million figure was announced in 1945 by a Soviet investigative commission based purely on multiplying the theoretical maximum capacity of the crematoria by the number of days they stood, without access to deportation train records. Decades of cross-checking original railway transport manifests from across Europe and camp registries established the documented historical reality: at least 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, of whom approximately 1.1 million perished (including roughly 1 million Jews, 70,000 to 75,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and 10,000 to 15,000 prisoners of other nationalities). After 1990, the Museum replaced the old plaques with new inscriptions in 23 languages recording the verified historical numbers.
IIFrom medieval Oshpitzin through the abyss of 1940 to 1945 to a sanctuary of world memory
The history of the site encompasses the stark contrast between centuries of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Christians in the royal town of Oświęcim, the five years of martyrdom from 1940 to 1945, and the preservation of sacred memory for humanity since 1945.
- 16th century to 1939The flourishing Jewish community of Oshpitzin in OświęcimJews settle in Oświęcim from the second half of the sixteenth century under royal Polish charters. By 1939 over 7,000 Jews (nearly 60 percent of the town's population) live in Oshpitzin (Honored Guests), worshiping in the Great Synagogue and nearly twenty houses of prayer.
- May to June 1940Establishment of Auschwitz I in OświęcimNazi occupation authorities requisition 22 brick buildings of former Polish artillery barracks on the outskirts of Oświęcim to establish Auschwitz I. On 14 June 1940 the first transport of 728 Polish political prisoners arrives from Tarnów, including priests, scholars, and Polish Jews.
- 14 August 1941Martyrdom of Father Saint Maximilian Maria KolbeAfter volunteering at the end of July 1941 to die of starvation in Cell 18 in the basement of Block 11 in place of husband and father Franciszek Gajowniczek, Father Maximilian Kolbe gives up his spirit on 14 August 1941.
- October 1941 to 1942Construction of Auschwitz II-Birkenau at Brzezinka villageThree kilometers west of Auschwitz I, the village of Brzezinka is razed to construct the 171-hectare Birkenau camp with over 300 wooden and brick barracks and four gas chamber and crematorium complexes (Crematoria II, III, IV, and V), becoming the central site of the European Shoah.
- 9 August 1942Martyrdom of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)Deported from the Carmelite convent in Echt (Netherlands) to Birkenau, the Jewish-born philosopher and Carmelite nun Edith Stein and her sister Rosa Stein suffer martyrdom in the gas chambers on 9 August 1942.
- 1943 to 1944Peak of the deportations and the Scrolls of AuschwitzHundreds of deportation trains from across occupied Europe (including over 430,000 Hungarian Jews in the summer of 1944) arrive at the Birkenau railway ramp. Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners secretly write and bury the Scrolls of Auschwitz beside Crematoria II and III.
- 27 January 1945 and 2 July 1947Liberation of roughly 7,000 survivors and foundation of the MemorialOn 27 January 1945 remaining prisoners in the camp are liberated (a date later designated by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day). On 2 July 1947 the Polish Parliament passes an act preserving the grounds of both camps forever as a State Memorial and Museum.
- 1979, 1982, and 1998UNESCO World Heritage inscription and canonizations of the martyrsIn June 1979 Pope John Paul II kneels in prayer inside Saint Maximilian Kolbe's cell and celebrates Mass at Birkenau, that same year UNESCO inscribes Auschwitz-Birkenau on the World Heritage List (Ref. 31). Father Maximilian Kolbe is canonized in 1982 and Sister Edith Stein in 1998.
Beyond Saint Maximilian Kolbe and Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, the soil of Auschwitz-Birkenau witnessed the martyrdom of numerous beatified and canonized figures across Christian traditions. Among them are the Daughter of Charity Blessed Marta Wiecka, Polish priests and religious among the 108 Martyrs of World War II (such as Salesian priest Blessed Józef Kowalski, Blessed Roman Archutowski, and Blessed Piotr Edward Dańkowski), as well as Eastern Orthodox saints including Saint Maria Skobtsova (Mother Maria of Paris, who sheltered persecuted Jews in France before her deportation) and Georgian Orthodox theologian and University of Warsaw professor Saint Grigol (Grzegorz) Peradze, who voluntarily stepped forward in Auschwitz in December 1942 to take the blame and die in the gas chamber in place of a fellow prisoner with a large family.
IIIMemorial spaces of Auschwitz I, the Birkenau expanse, and the surviving synagogue of Oświęcim
Unlike sanctuaries built to celebrate architectural splendor, the physical structures of Auschwitz-Birkenau are conserved according to strict principles of documentary authenticity and contemplative silence. The memorial comprises two principal zones separated by three kilometers: Auschwitz I (the original 20-hectare camp at Oświęcim) and Auschwitz II-Birkenau (the 171-hectare expanse at Brzezinka), complemented by the living prayer space of the Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue in the historic town center of Oświęcim.
Located in the southwestern corner of the 28 two-story red-brick barracks of Auschwitz I, Block 11 (the Death Block) and the courtyard Death Wall commemorate tens of thousands of Polish resistance members and prisoners. In the dark basement beneath Block 11 lies Cell 18, where Father Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe died of starvation and lethal injection in August 1941. Beneath its single small window stands the ornate Easter Paschal candle presented by Pope John Paul II in 1979.
Spanning 171 hectares, Birkenau opens with the red-brick Gatehouse (Wartownia) through which the single-track railway line runs straight to the unloading and selection platform (Judenrampe). Flanking the tracks stand the brick barracks of Sector BI (the women's camp) and hundreds of solitary brick chimneys rising from the foundations of the former wooden barracks of Sector BII like silent gravestones across the meadow.
At the western end of Birkenau, set amid groves of white birch trees, lie thedynamited brick ruins of the four gas chamber and crematorium complexes (Crematoria II, III, IV, and V). Directly beside Crematoria IV and V and in the birch woods lie the Ash Ponds and Ash Fields where the cremated remains of hundreds of thousands of Jewish martyrs were cast. Under Jewish religious law (Halakha), these waters and grounds constitute an inviolable cemetery.
Positioned at the terminus of the railway spur between the ruins of Crematoria II and III, the International Monument was unveiled on 16 April 1967 to a design by an Italian-Polish team of sculptors (Pietro Cascella, Giorgio Simoncini, Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, and Julian Pałka). Grey granite blocks evoking sarcophagi and chimneys rise above a broad stone plaza bearing 23 bronze plaques inscribed in the 23 languages of the victims.
Standing in the western zone of Birkenau is the preserved brick bathhouse and disinfection building where incoming prisoners were registered. Its final room houses a deeply moving permanent installation displaying hundreds of pre-war family photographs found in the suitcases of Jewish deportees: weddings, smiling children, Sabbath gatherings, and seaside holidays that restore individual names and human faces.
Located at 5 Ks. Jana Skarbka Square in the old town of Oświęcim (now part of the Auschwitz Jewish Center), this is the sole synagogue out of nearly twenty pre-war Jewish houses of worship in Oshpitzin to survive World War II (having been used as a munitions depot). Built around 1913 by the Confraternity of Mishnah Study, it was fully restored in 2000 with its carved wooden Torah Ark (Aron Kodesh), central Bimah, and eternal light (Ner Tamid) as an active place of Jewish prayer.
Many visitors with limited time tour only the brick barracks of Auschwitz I and omit Auschwitz II-Birkenau three kilometers away. While Auschwitz I houses historical exhibitions and the cell of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, it is the vast 171-hectare landscape of Birkenau with its railway ramp, birch groves, and Ash Ponds that is the actual resting place of over ninety percent of the victims (approximately one million Jews as well as Saint Edith Stein). Taking the free museum shuttle bus or walking the three-kilometer path from Auschwitz I to Birkenau to stand in silent prayer beside the Ash Ponds and the International Monument is essential to honoring the martyrs.
IVThe lie of the land and orientation
Before describing the physical geography, it must be stated with complete clarity and reverence that neither Judaism nor Christianity teaches East Asian feng shui, and the location of the camp complex was chosen by military planners in 1940 for the isolation of its river marshes and its railway junction rather than any sacred geomantic criteria. Nevertheless, because these 191 hectares have become the eternal cemetery of over one million souls and a place of global pilgrimage, the library records the natural topography, river confluence, and spatial axes that now cradle the ashes of the victims.
Situated in southern Poland at coordinates 50.0358 degrees north, 19.1783 degrees east (Birkenau) and 50.0275 degrees north, 19.2028 degrees east (Auschwitz I), the Oświęcim - Brzezinka basin lies at an elevation of roughly 240 meters within the low-lying Oświęcim Valley (Kotlina Oświęcimska), directly at the alluvial triangle where the Soła River flowing north from the Żywiec Beskids joins the upper Vistula River (Wisła) flowing eastward toward Kraków (home to Wawel Cathedral and the Divine Mercy Sanctuary). Auschwitz I stands on the eastern bank of the Soła River, while the vast plain of Birkenau stretches west of the Soła and just south of the Vistula. Because heavy clay soil underlies this river confluence, quiet morning and evening mists frequently blanket the meadows.
In terms of spatial orientation, the 171-hectare cemetery of Birkenau is structured along a straight east-to-west axis: pilgrims enter through the Gatehouse on the east and walk nearly a kilometer due west along the railway spur toward the International Monument, the ruined crematoria, the white birch groves (Brzezinka), and the Ash Ponds. Symbolically, the westward path (toward the setting sun) mirrors the earthly departure of over a million lives, while when pilgrims stand at the International Monument and the Ash Ponds at the western end and turn back toward the east-southeast (the direction of Jerusalem for Jewish mourners reciting Kaddish, and the direction of the rising sun in Christian prayer), the morning light streams directly down the green corridor of the camp.
What moves many visitors is the quiet regeneration of nature over this scarred earth: groves of silver-barked birch trees (which gave the village of Brzezinka its name), green meadow grass, and the still waters of the Ash Ponds now shelter the shattered brick ruins, while the twin courses of the Soła and Vistula rivers embrace the basin on both flanks in perpetual stillness.
VThe Mourner's Kaddish, the March of the Living, and Feast Days of the Martyrs
At Auschwitz-Birkenau there are no festive celebrations, instead, the site hosts some of the world's most solemn liturgical commemorations, interfaith prayers, and pilgrimages of life observed according to the Hebrew calendar, the Christian liturgical calendar, and the international calendar of the United Nations.
| Date | Calendar | Commemoration or feast | Observance at Auschwitz-Birkenau |
|---|---|---|---|
| 27 January annually | Gregorian, United Nations International Day | International Holocaust Remembrance Day | Marking the anniversary of the camp's liberation on 27 January 1945. Survivors, religious leaders, and delegations place candles at the Death Wall (Auschwitz I) and the International Monument (Birkenau), reciting the Mourner's Kaddish and ecumenical prayers. |
| 27 Nisan (April or May) | Hebrew lunisolar calendar | Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and the March of the Living | Tens of thousands of Jewish youth and international participants walk three kilometers in silence from the gate of Auschwitz I to Birkenau affirming the continuity of life (Am Yisrael Chai), lighting six torches for the six million victims of the Shoah and chanting Kaddish and El Malei Rachamim. |
| 9 August annually | Gregorian, Catholic liturgical calendar | Feast of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Virgin, Martyr, and Co-Patroness of Europe | Catholic pilgrims and Discalced Carmelite nuns gather in prayer at Birkenau (where she was martyred on 9 August 1942) and at the Carmelite Convent and Center for Dialogue and Prayer in Oświęcim. |
| 14 August annually | Gregorian, Catholic liturgical calendar | Solemnity of Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, Priest and Martyr of Charity | Polish diocesan and Franciscan pilgrimages lay flowers and light candles in Cell 18 beneath Block 11 (Auschwitz I) and celebrate Pontifical Mass in honor of prisoner 16670. |
| 2 August annually | Gregorian, International Memorial Calendar | European Holocaust Memorial Day for Sinti and Roma | Solemn memorial and prayer ceremony held in Sector BIIe of Birkenau (the former Roma Family Camp) honoring the 21,000 Roma and Sinti men, women, and children who perished here. |
In keeping with ancient Jewish custom, pilgrims standing before the International Monument, beside the Ash Ponds, or along the Birkenau railway ties gently place small stones of remembrance (kamyki pamięci) brought from their homelands onto the masonry, for cut flowers wither whereas stone endures like eternal memory. And in the hush of the birch woods, the ancient Aramaic prayer of the Mourner's Kaddish (Yitgadal v'yitkadash sh'mei raba..., meaning Magnified and sanctified be His great Name) never once mentions death or vengeance, proclaiming instead the holiness of the God of Life and praying that abundant peace from heaven descend upon all humanity.
VILocation And How To Get There
- Address
- Getting there
- From Kraków Główny central station (or from Katowice), direct regional trains run to Oświęcim station (taking 50 to 70 minutes, the entrance to Auschwitz I is a 20-minute walk or short local bus ride from the station), and direct buses also depart from the Kraków MDA bus terminal right to the Museum entrance. Free museum shuttle buses run every 10 to 15 minutes between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau three kilometers away.
- Coordinates
- 50.0358, 19.1783
When visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, please remember that all 191 hectares of Auschwitz I and Birkenau form a vast cemetery holding human ashes. Visitors must dress modestly and respectfully, walk quietly, and maintain a solemn demeanor throughout their visit. Walking or posing for photographs on the railway tracks at Birkenau, speaking loudly, eating or drinking on the memorial grounds, removing any stone or artifact, or taking photographs inside the Room of Victim's Hair (Block 4) and the basement Starvation Cell of Saint Maximilian Kolbe (Block 11) is strictly forbidden.
Nearby places in the library
VIIContribute To This Page
Contribute photos, information or video for Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
Góp ảnh, thông tin hoặc video cho Khu tưởng niệm và Thánh địa Chứng nhân Đức tin Auschwitz-BirkenauEveryone is welcome to enrich this page: a photo you took, a detail the page misses, a short video. Every contribution is read and answered.
Thầy Ưng Khiêm mời cộng đồng cùng làm giàu trang này. Ảnh chụp tận nơi, một chi tiết lịch sử chưa được nhắc, một đoạn video ngắn: mọi đóng góp đều được đọc và trả lời.
No community contribution yet. You could be the first. Chưa có đóng góp nào từ cộng đồng. Bạn có thể là người đầu tiên.
?Quick Questions
Why is Auschwitz-Birkenau considered the largest cemetery in the world and sacred ground in Judaism?
Between 1940 and January 1945, approximately 1.1 million people were murdered here, including roughly 1 million Jews from across Europe (ninety percent of all victims). Because the cremated ashes of the victims were scattered directly into the Ash Ponds, marshes, and fields of Birkenau, the entire landscape is an unmarked cemetery holding the remains of one million martyrs who died for the Sanctification of the Divine Name (Kiddush Hashem).
What is the difference between Auschwitz I in Oświęcim and Auschwitz II-Birkenau in Brzezinka?
Auschwitz I (20 hectares on the outskirts of Oświęcim) was the original concentration camp established in 1940 in pre-war red-brick military barracks, housing the historical exhibitions, Block 11, and the starvation cell of Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Auschwitz II-Birkenau (171 hectares in Brzezinka village three kilometers west), built from late 1941 onward, was the main extermination center with the railway ramp, four gas chamber and crematorium complexes, and the Ash Ponds where over ninety percent of the victims perished.
Where did the martyrdom of Father Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe take place within the camp?
In late July 1941 at Auschwitz I, when prisoner Franciszek Gajowniczek was selected among ten men to die of starvation and wept for his wife and children, Conventual Franciscan priest Father Maximilian Kolbe (prisoner 16670) stepped forward and volunteered to take his place. Father Kolbe led his companions in prayer for two weeks in Cell 18 in the basement of Block 11 before being killed by lethal injection on 14 August 1941 (he was canonized in 1982, with the surviving Gajowniczek present).
How is Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) connected to Auschwitz-Birkenau?
Edith Stein (1891 to 1942) was a renowned German-Jewish phenomenologist born in Wrocław. After converting to Catholicism in 1922 and entering the Discalced Carmelite Order as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, she was arrested in the Netherlands because of her Jewish heritage and murdered in the gas chambers at Birkenau on 9 August 1942. She was canonized in 1998 and proclaimed Co-Patroness of Europe.
Does any pre-war Jewish house of prayer still survive in the town of Oświęcim today?
Before 1939, Jews formed nearly 60 percent of Oświęcim's population and called their town Oshpitzin (Honored Guests) in Yiddish. Today, in the historic center of Oświęcim stands the restored Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue (built around 1913), the sole synagogue in the town to survive World War II, now part of the Auschwitz Jewish Center and open for Jewish prayer.